Finding Myself
Singleton, Sile (2010-03-11)
>>SILE: Wow, modern technology.
[laughter]
>>INTERVIEWER: Okay, so you were saying your great grandfather...
>>SILE: So, on my mother's side, my great grandfather... Um, he was the junior minister that came and founded Union Baptist AMH Church, and um, Southern Baptist, sorry. And on my dad's side, I don't ever remember there not being a family member, whether it would be great uncle or cousin or, some member of our family was always the minister of the church, so... you know.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow, wow. That's... that's, wow! That's really cool, actually!
>>SILE: A whole lot of preaching going on.
[laughter]
>>INTERVIEWER: Well, how did that, um, did that affect your... Let me put it this way. In your, you know when you were being brought up, I guess, you know...
>>SILE: So how I identify? How did that affect me? Or...
>>INTERVIEWER: Yes, with um... Thank you for asking the question for me. I'm so nervous! Um... [laughter] But you're, um... yeah, exactly. What do you say?
>>SILE: Well, it's a funny thing. I guess, first of all I should say that I identify as a transgender person.
>>INTERVIEWER: Mmhmm.
>>SILE: I came out as a lesbian, um, and I really came out as a lesbian because it sort of fit and was the only thing I could find. Um, I was born in 1961, so that was pre 'gay people are okay and not crazy', you know, and people just didn't... I can't ever remember anyone until I was out of the house ever saying anything negative about gay people, but somewhere along the line I picked up that you should keep that to yourself, sort of. I don't know if it's because there were very visible, um, gay couples in both of... both of our churches that were high members up like Deacons and things like that. But that was just so-and-so's friend, even though that friend was, there was always that piece that hung there. There was always that almost imperceptible pause, you know, where you might say, 'Well this is my friend such-and-such.' But if it's more than your friend, it's like, 'This is my friend, [pause], such-and-such.'
>>INTERVIEWER: Right.
>>SILE: You know, or you know, his 'friend'. You know Mr. So-and-so and Mr. So-and-so have lived in that house forever. They've been 'friends' forever.
>>INTERVIEWER: Right, wow.
>>SILE: So, I would say on the Methodist side, on my father's side definitely it could be because of the macho... the machismo and bravado was so much that I don't know if people would even dare to suggest there be anything else. You know, that you could be anything else and somehow that would be kind of going against, you know, being that strong black woman or that strong black man. But I don't ever recall anybody saying that, you know.
>>INTERVIEWER: That's just the feeling you got?
>>SILE: But I used to spend a lot of time, I knew at a very early age that there was something different about me. I knew I was born a female, biologically a female, and... but... it never quite fit. Not to the point that some of my friends, you know, really felt like they were a boy or they were in the wrong body or something like that. I can't say that I ever really felt like I was in the wrong body. I just felt like, for me, that I have extra parts. Like, my breasts - I could do without those. You know, I'd be chill if I didn't have that. [laughter] I don't really want to change anything other than that if I so desire to take that money and do all of that. And only for reasons that I think it would be easier for people to see me and it'd be okay for the things I liked to do. I was a big tomboy, but I also was, like, a huge Girl Scout. Like, with the sewing and the cooking, like, I loved that part, you know, and all the stuff that you'd have to do to get the patches and all of that. So, what I... so I don't know... so I just, you know, when it came up and I start looking around to find out, I always like girls. You know, guys were okay, really okay, but I always, like, had this soft spot for girls. And I noticed that the other girls around me weren't necessarily having the same kind of soft spot. I don't think that they were laying at the sleepovers like, 'Oh my God, what am I going to...' you know? [laughter] I don't think that they were doing that, because they did too much hugging, like, that's the other thing about it. Like, they're all hugging and hanging on each other. I wasn't, so that sort of gets you tagged as a tomboy, too, but it wasn't necessarily that. It was just that, I couldn't hang on them like that, you know, because I would want them to treat me the same way that they felt they treated the boys that were around there, you know. But at first I remember being in the library. It was like junior high or something, and I ran across... I can't remember what I was reading - I try to think that all the time - I can't remember what I was reading but it had, like , 'lesbian' in it. And I can remember I was like, 'Gasp!' [laughter] I thought I knew what it was, but I ran to, you know, the dictionary and read that and I read this and I was like, 'Oh my gosh!' And I kept that book out forever. There was, it was really nothing. It really, maybe amounted to a paragraph of whatever it was, you know. And this person was, it was, like horrible that she was that thing. But I was so like, 'Wow, in a book!' Somehow that legitimized...
>>INTERVIEWER: Oh, yeah.
>>SILE: You know, somehow that legitimized whatever was going on with me. And that began my quest to kind of find out about these lesbians and somehow I found out, like they kind of have secret societies, you know. [laughter] And I spent most of high school trying to figure out how to access that secret society, because there were, like known or reported-to-be lesbians in our school,you know, and I played basketball with some of them. And I was pretty certain that my best friend was, like going to be one of them, and I would always, like try and figure out... But I never got invited to the secret society things.
[laughter]
>>INTERVIEWER: The secret meetings.
[laughter]
>>SILE: I never got invited. Yeah, the secret meetings. They honestly did, they... One of our friend's mom, she just had a mom, single parent... and they lived in a trailor park and it was kind of, like on the end of the outskirts of the city, at least in my mind that's where it was. You know, I knew we had to drive this long road. And you couldn't get into this park without seeing the car coming across the road and coming down, and every time we would go over there, because she would have a lot... her mom wasn't there because she worked nights, so she would have a lot of people over, you know, basketball parties, things like that, and my friend would always flick the light. And I finally asked her...
>>INTERVIEWER: Like, on her car, or...?
>>SILE: On her car, like when we would turn, she'd like turn the turn signal, and then she'd be like, flick flick. [laughter] And later I found out that that was, like the sign that somebody that wasn't in the secret society was, you know, with that person.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow!
>>SILE: So, you know, it was just stuff like that and I just can remember then, like sneaking to the library and trying to, to like... find 'lesbian' in stuff, and you know...
>>INTERVIEWER: Like, works about it, or what?
>>SILE: Like in the... what do you call it? The catalogue... index? You know, going there and trying to find 'lesbian', you know, and not being able to find 'lesbian' but being able to find 'lesbos', you know. And then going from 'lesbos' to the Greek stuff, and some of the Greek stuff seemed kind of lesbian-ish [laughter] you know, to me and just finding out... just trying to piece together who I was and all of that through, you know... really through research. And to think all this time I... maybe that's why I hated this so much, because it was so hard, you know, to do that.
>>INTERVIEWER: Hated what, reading, or research?
>>SILE: Well, later, like one of my least favorite things to do is to really, really get down and dirty with the researching, you know, and I think sometimes maybe it was from that. [laughter] Because I would just scour, like get encyclopedias and, like get over in the corner of a library somewhere and be like, go to the pages and look and see what was in there.
>>INTERVIEWER: So you were trying... Let me make sure I understand you correctly, that you were trying to understand more about yourself by, like looking into these?
>>SILE: Yeah.
>>INTERVIEWER: They, like legitimized you in a way? Like, I'm not the only one because someone else was writing about it?
>>SILE: Somewhere along the line I figured out that, well, yeah, these feelings that I'm having for this girl because, well, I'm a girl... that's what they tell me anyhow, you know...Um, that, you know there's a name for it. And, you know, even though I would read, like, some disturbing psychological accounts, you know, you'd find a lot of different things at that time, like just about, you know, the psychological world, the psychiatry world, the clinical world, you know, you would find bits and pieces in science journals and whatnot about homosexuality. It would be confusing because in those texts it would say homosexuality, it wouldn't say anything about 'lesbians'. So in my mind that worked out that, well it was really, really bad to be a homosexual, male on male...
>>INTERVIEWER: Ohh, oh yeah. Right.
>>SILE: But it wasn't so bad to be a lesbian because you could not find necessarily instances of, you know, of text talking about it. It was just sort of a reference, like, and the female version of this is called lesbian.
>>INTERVIEWER: Oh, okay, okay I get what you're saying.
>>SILE: You know, and so whatever. And then it would have, you know, these accounts and these stories, and usually those women were, well, their husbands were terrible or, you know, they'd been raised without a mother, or you know, things like that. So for me, I just sort of discounted that a bit, you know, because it didn't say 'lesbian'.
[laughter]
>>INTERVIEWER: Right.
>>SILE: So, you know, it must not be as bad.
>>INTERVIEWER: Oh, so do you think that stigma is still here... Do you think that's still the stigma that being a gay male is worse in society than...
>>SILE: Yeah, I do. And the reason I do is because of the porn industry.
>>INTERVIEWER: Oh, yeah.
>>SILE: You know, there's sort of a certain amount of glorification that goes on. Every guy that you ever, you know, talk to, you know, for the most part, even... even some of my gay male friends will talk about, you know, there's something attractive about that - there's something attractive about girl-on-girl. So that's seen as okay and billions of dollars, right, are made off of girl-on-girl sex. So it's more of a joke and a show, and, you know, what I've had male friends tell me is they can absolutely understand why I wouldn't want to be with a man. [laughter] You know, because of the way that men treat women. I mean this is them saying that. Not just about, like, ew... hairy guy. Not just about that, but just about the whole... I mean, I had a really long conversation one evening with a couple of straight men over, you know, this and they're like, 'Well guys treat women terribly, and blah blah blah.' So, you know, it's not seen as... You don't want your daughter to walk in and say that she's a dyke, but it's not as bad as if your son would walk in and say he's gay. You know, it just seems like it comes out that way. Maybe that's not true for the majority of the world, but in my experience that's what... that's how I understand it, you know?
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow.
>>SILE: And I think that that played a lot in... and it's curious to me that I never really... I didn't really grab ahold of the transgender name until I... I actually was working for Ohio State and I had just gotten a job as their Gay and Lesbian Coordinator, and um, part of the reason that I adopted the 'T' was so that I could really, um, in my mind, fight for the cause that it should be... it was the GLB office, it was the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual office. The 'T' was not there, and so I concocted in my mind that I was going to say I was transgender. I had been playing around with it...
>>INTERVIEWER: The idea? Right...
>>SILE: To myself, you know, but then I was going to claim that identity so then it would more legitimize my claim that we need to put this 'T' on here. How can I work at this office that doesn't even address me, you know? But I didn't run across any of, um, that, and I think that part of the reason that I sort of shunned the transgender stuff is because for me, I don't now necessarily see myself as a lesbian. I am in a relationship with a woman, a biological woman, but I don't... I think that part of what went on is I never wanted to be seen as a gay man...
>>INTERVIEWER: [laughs] Okay...?
>>SILE: Like, I really didn't. I do drag kinging, right? I'm a drag king. Do you know what that is?
>>INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
>>SILE: Okay, I'm just making sure because a lot of people don't.
>>INTERVIEWER: Hey, no... no, I... That's a fair assumption.
>>SILE: So, I do drag kinging, and in the first... in the early years, I mean, I would, like be so upset if someone described my character, Lester, as gay.
>>INTERVIEWER: Really?
>>SILE: I did not want him to be gay at all. I was like, 'He is not gay. You know, he's so not gay.' Which is kind of weird, right?
[laughter]
>>INTERVIEWER: Right. Yeah.
>>SILE: You know, but I... I'm like, 'Lester is not gay. He might be pretty, [laughter], you know. He might be good at some domestic stuff, but Lester is not gay.' Because with my transgender identity, I see myself as more masculine. And so therefore the relationship that I'm in with a more feminine, I wouldn't say that, like, she's a... like, okay, she's a tomboy, really. [laughter] And, but... but, like I just didn't want to be... I don't know, you know? I just didn't want to be a gay man. Like, I don't even know how to explain it. [laughter] I really don't. It's confusing, but, you know, I just didn't want to be a gay man because the kind of character and the kind of guys that I would try to pattern myself off of were also my father, my uncles - all very strong men that were not gay.
>>INTERVIEWER: Right.
>>SILE: Ladies' men - you know, like always ladies' men, gentlemen, that type of thing, you know? Pretty, [laughter] you know, worrying about their nails and their hair and their suits and all of that stuff, but they weren't gay. And somehow, for me to identify as a gay man, or any of that energy there, then it would take away from my masculinity in a really weird way. [laughter] So, anyhow, back to the books. So, you know, I didn't like, really come across any of that until right before I took that job, which I think was like '92. And '92, you know, you see this kind of, this... this push, you start to really see this push for the adding of the 'T' in all kinds of literature. You know, transgender people are standing up and saying, 'Well, wait a minute. Everything is gay. Gay or lesbian, gay or lesbian.' So then bisexuals got added on, you know, and still the people that most folks identify any kind of queering with, the transgender people - the freaks, we're not... we're not part of any of this. And how is that possible? So we can get in the streets and fight for you and create all this drama, but then when it comes to, you know... comes to the business at hand, we've got to look like everybody else. We've got to have our picket fences. We've got to have all of this. I've got to stay in the dark in the bar onstage, but outside of that, you know, let's not talk about the 'T'.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow. So, so from... when you were younger and when you were like, you know, trying to figure all of this out and you were kind of, like researching them and stuff... So now you work, do you still work with the...?
>>SILE: No, I don't.
[laughter]
>>INTERVIEWER: Okay, well when you did and stuff, how did you see in that timeframe, how did you see that transition in literature, then of...?
>>SILE: Well, we had, let's see. I... I, um, like I said in '92 we started really seeing, I mean, of course there were people doing... doing, writing things about, um, about bisexuality, but really the gays and lesbians just thought that they were confused, you know, the bisexuals, really. But then you get the transexual mess comes in, and this person is like standing up daring to say, 'Look, I am more than... I am more than a drag queen.' And for the most part, I, like didn't even know that I knew any trans guys, you know? Because for the most part you did not see trans, like now in, um, queer culture, you will see trans guys, trans women, that are, like, out and about. There are trans guys and trans women. At that time, people were, like passing, you know. That was their goal - to make their transition from, you know, whatever to whatever, and then they just disappeared into mainstream. So we... there's like this big gap there.
>>INTERVIEWER: So, like, they wanted no one to ever know that they had ever been a male or a female before?
>>SILE: Yeah, you know? And even in gay culture, I just call it gay culture - that's what it was, it was gay culture, and even when you read in gay magazines, like we saw this big explosion in the '90s of the 'gay magazine' on regular shelves, you know? They've always been there, don't make that mistake. They've always been there, but where did you have to go? You had to go to, like, The Lion's Den, you know, like the adult bookstore, to get anything non-scientific that addressed desire, you know? You had to go to the gay bookstore or, I mean, to the adult bookstore or, you could, if you were so lucky to be in college, you know, and maybe if you knew somebody, like in Women's Studies, you know, which is relatively new at that time, you might find out that there were other books available that were out there, but you didn't see them on the shelves. Now, you go into any self-respecting bookstore and you're going to find a section of... it probably says 'Gay and Lesbian Literature'. I will say that, you know. Now, your bigger chains will have, sometimes GLBT, you know. A lot of times it just says 'Gay'. Just, like, 'Gay' as a category, and you go there and you try and find your stuff, you know. [laughter] But at that time, the '90s, I mean not really. If it had more of, like a scientific bit to it, or if it was, you know, like a story, maybe... you know?
>>INTERVIEWER: But not, like a culture magazine that focused on...?
>>SILE: No, no. There weren't racks, you know. At Virgin, well we don't have one here anymore, but you know, at Virgin Records when they were here, there was a whole, like row of gay magazines. What? [laughter] Like, nice ones, you know? And everything with... with international and national ads and whatnot in them, you know? They're not just making their money by selling, you know, personal ads or you know, physically enhancing creams or things like that. [laughter]
[coughing]
>>INTERVIEWER: Right. Right, yeah. It's like, legit.
>>SILE: Like, hey, it is what it is. It is what it is. And so that would be the biggest transformation in literature from when I was little. Even, like now, it's so funny because, you know, our kids now have access to all of this.
>>INTERVIEWER: Totally.
>>SILE: And they know, I mean, yes, I know in our small towns... probably stillin Zanesville there may be somebody that lives in the country somewhere that doesn't know it, but I highly doubt it.
>>INTERVIEWER: Right.
>>SILE: Because humans are curious, and things we hear all of this stuff and we see it on television, you know. I mean, even if you don't have cable you can still get, like, twenty stations without, you know, with the little box or whatever. And they'll have... One of them is going to be PBS and at least now, like before you'd be waiting for months for PBS to play anything that even mentioned, you know, even mentioned anything gay, and then you could wait and see at the end the literature that they said. I mean, that's what you would have to do.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow.
>>SILE: You know, and it's how... how stuff gets taken for granted. You know, now I can go in the library and there's a whole section of stuff. Before, you know, you had to wait, watch that PBS show, and then, and you know, this was even before video was, you know, like a video player was in the house. So, you know, you hopefully have that show on there and no one's sitting there where you can write down who it references at the end so you can go look those people up and try and find literature about your life.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow.
>>SILE: Right? And then there's the whole process of trying to, um, borrow it. You know?
>>INTERVIEWER: Oh! I didn't even think about that!
>>SILE: You know, you have to go to a person. I mean, at that time there's no self-checking out. You know, you have to go to the librarian and have them get your card out of the book, you know, you're like sliding the book up there, you know? And they're pulling it out and you're trying to, like, look at them because you're trying to be proud and defiant of who you are [laughter], you know, so you get your eyes up there really quick, and then you look down, you know. And the person is just like, boom boom. You know, you can tell by their stamp whether they're happy about you getting this book or not, you know. And then you worry about where that information goes.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow! I didn't even think about that!
>>SILE: You know? I mean, it's like that! It's like you don't want to be... trust me, in high school they know, everybody knows where the books you shouldn't be reading are in the library. And if you are in that isle, you know, like, it's like that. It's really like that. They know that that section is there, so you have to, like, try and walk by and grab a bunch of books and get the book out of it and do all of that kind of thing, you know? So now I think it's a little more, I mean now we're seeing kids junior high be out, you know. Asking to watch things that pertain to their lives, you know, and books - for books that pertain to their lives, you know. My daughter just, they're doing a book, um... well, they're reading for Haiti, and so however many hours you read, then you can get these books, you know. You get raffle tickets to get these books. And there were a couple books in there that were GLBT family-friendly. Never in my life did I think that I would live...
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow. How does that make you feel? From the way things were when you were younger...
>>SILE: I didn't think that in my lifetime, I really didn't, I really did not... I really didn't believe in my lifetime... I would sit in church and, um, and read... there's this big, huge tablet that had all of the names of the first parishioners and everything of the church, it was just this big, huge tablet, you know? And I would just sit there reading all the names and try to imagine who these people were and all of this kind of stuff. And I would also sit there and pick out the names of my children that I was going to have, because my plan from... I... I know that I was probably nine or ten, maybe eleven, when I first started trying to devise a plan to be able to be who I was. And so I decided that I would be a teacher, because in my young mind teachers, well teachers didn't seem like they had a life outside of school, right?
[laughter]
>>INTERVIEWER: Totally, my mom's one.
>>SILE: And... and so, you know, so most teachers, in everything you read and stuff and the things that I would pick up were that teachers didn't get married.
>>INTERVIEWER: Yeah, no totally. I know exactly what you mean.
>>SILE: So I thought that I would be a teacher and then I would just adopt, you know, or take in kids and of course they'd want a new name, like, you know, because they were going to be my child. So that's how I was going to do that. I had that plan. Or, I decided that I would marry a trucker, and if I married a trucker a trucker would be on the road all the time, right? [laughter] And I would only have to see them, like, maybe once a month or something. [laughter] And then I could do whatever else I wanted to do, you know? [laughter] I just knew... and I would always just be like, 'I don't want to be married to a man.' But I would sit there and wish that I could be married to Miss So-and-so that's in the choir, you know? There were a couple hotties in the choir when I was nine years old! [laughter] You know, I'd always be hugging them. [laughter] But seriously, you know, I would sit there and read that and think about, you know, how I could devise a plan.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow. So, you mentioned that you have a daughter, is that correct?
>>SILE: Yes, I do.
>>INTERVIEWER: How old is she, may I ask?
>>SILE: She's six.
>>INTERVIEWER: Alright, and how do you incorporate reading and stuff with her?
>>SILE: We have read to her since before she was born.
>>INTERVIEWER: Oh, yeah?
>>SILE: You know, we would read, um, we would read to her and, um, I would just, like kind of sit there and my wife would just be there with the baby and everything and I would just read different stuff, you know. We'd be like, 'Baby, look at this!'
>>INTERVIEWER: Yeah!
>>SILE: You know, isn't that cute, stuff like that. From, I mean, the very first night that she was on Earth we read to her.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow.
>>SILE: And, it's... she is now, I'm very proud to say, reading at a fourth grade level.
>>INTERVIEWER: Oh man!
>>SILE: But, it's also her, too. She loves books. She loves writing books. She's now, her obsession is taking papers and stapling them together and then writing books in them, you know, that's what she does.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow!
>>SILE: And, um, she really wants to have a book. And I just think that it's so cool because reading was really important to me. It saved my life, you know. And I say that it saved my life because it gave me a place to go. I read very early. I was a pretty bright kid and I'd read everything. Just absolutely anything and everything I could get my hands on, I would read it, no matter what it was, you know. I would read directions just because I just wanted to read, and um, also because my great grandmother... my great grandmother did not graduate from high school until the year before her oldest daughter.
>>INTERVIEWER: So she went back?
>>SILE: She went back to school.
>>INTERVIEWER: Oh, that's awesome!
>>SILE: And something that I kind of brought with me...
>>INTERVIEWER: OH!!
>>SILE: I brought with me her... her books. And she would get these out, they're the Blue Books, and how people would... this was your high school and college entrance exam and there is one for Latin, one for Biology and one for Spanish.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow! Thank you!
>>SILE: Let's see, where in here... I think it's in this one, that she actually like, writes her name in, you know, in her book, and I remember that she would get these out. She would always be, sort of, um, I don't know, like just sharing with us little bits and pieces of knowledge that she had, you know. And I can remember her getting these out one day and asking me if I would like them. And, like, for me, I didn't grow up with this idea that I think it's perpetuated a lot about being poor and not reading, being black and not reading... reading was, just so important to us, and that it was like, I mean, she was doing Spanish, and she was doing Latin, and Biology and stuff. And that's petty!
>>INTERVIEWER: Right! Totally.
>>SILE: And so I always had that sense that I wanted to, you know, to aspire to be able to get these books, you know, and do the stuff in these books. And she... I also brought, um, the Honey Bunch Series. These were my mom's.
>>INTERVIEWER: Which is...?
>>SILE: Which, I can show you, this is the Honey Bunch Series, which is, I would say like junior high. You know, young reader readers. And it was this whole series about this little, curly blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl, [laughter] that was very saucy, you know. [laughter] And she, um, was just the apple of mother and father's eyes, and she got to go different places. So it'd be like Honey Bunch and her first visit to New York City. Honey Bunch and her first visit to the beach, you know? Honey Bunch goes to grandma's house. And my grandmother had those, and that's... we learned how to read on those. And I can, you know, this is where I cut my teeth on wanting to go everywhere. I mean, Honey Bunch got to go everywhere. And it never occurred to me that I didn't look like Honey Bunch or anything. It was just that she was this really rambunctious and, you know, just... she was always out there and she always would ask the question even if, you know, mother and father thought that it might be a little inappropriate, you know? [laughter] She was always asking those questions and I... that's what I grew up on, and that's where I would get that... that love that I have now, you know, for reading. What else do I have in my bag of treats?
>>INTERVIEWER: Oh, your bag of treats!
>>SILE: Oh yeah. And then I kind of brought this one because I thought that it was... this was like, my Bible.
>>INTERVIEWER: Aww!!
>>SILE: In, um, junior high. The Meditations of Linus. [laughter] You know, and it basically, like... like, um...
>>INTERVIEWER: Did you identify with him?
>>SILE: Kind of. And just, you know, it was... it was... I was, I was a pensive kid. I was always in my head or whatnot, and I would often, like put my book down and then, you know, say something out of whatever I was reading. You know, and I very much liked to, you know, say some of these things, you know, because there was also... I guess at that time that would've also been the... what Kung Fu... was it called Kung Fu?
>>INTERVIEWER: The show with David Carradine?
>>SILE: Yeah, the show with David Carradine, right? And so, like, he was always, like meditating [laughter] and saying these, like, you know, one-line wise things [laughter] you know? And so, I ran across this book and I just had to have it [laughter], and I just, like, think in terms of books, you know? I really do. I think in terms of books because books are where you find characters that aren't like everybody else. And if nothing else, I knew I wasn't like everybody else. You know, so I think it, um... "I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings", "To Kill a Mockingbird", those are vivid in my mind that really, really spoke to racism, you know? And said it out loud, and portrayed it in its ugly way and also, you know, showed that there are ways to, you know, get around that. "Love Story", that was like the first... I can just remember my face just being so burning, you know, when I was reading that because it was like, scandalous! [laughing] They were... they were having relations in those, you know, in there and I just... I think about, like Girl Scouts, you know are my handbook. I just love those things. You had a handbook and it told you how to be the best citizen, [laughing] and you learned all of these things that were going to be useful for life later in that book. [laughter] And I still have my first-aid, um, we had this set of first-aid books that we got, and I still have those. And I don't know. When I think in terms of my life, I often think of what was I reading around that time, or you know, how did I... And now I'm so proud that I have a budding library and I have a whole section on GLBT stuff, you know. And I'm always lending my books out or giving books to people so that they can learn more. But, you know, it's amazing to me how people will say, you know, well no one writes anything. You know, I would say we still are in a place with GLBT literature, black gay literature... I mean, you're still not going to get...If you Google, it's still going to be a relatively small amount. You know, a lot of those are going to be, sort of, pulp-fiction things. Or, you have, there are a lot of people writing identity. And now, there's actually folks, which I just started reading: Appalachian black gays.
>>INTERVIEWER: Like Zanesville! [laughter]
>>SILE: I am so excited! Right! You know, what about those of us that are people of color, especially African American, especially black people. I'm a kid of the '60s so I'm black. [laughter] You know, especially black country... for me it's like this constant coming-out because I'm country, you know. I am from the country. I'm straight off the river. You couldn't get any closer to the river than Zanesville. River and trains and corn - that's what's there... and clay, you know, for pottery. But we're starting to see people kind of take pride in that and it's not shameful. Somehow, country got equated with white, you know. But my great grandmother is from Danville, Kentucky. We listen to country all the time! I mean, all the time. And they so love Lawrence Welk! [laughter] You know, and to me, that was country! That was really country. They got a '45 record player just so they could listen to country music.
>>INTERVIEWER: Wow.
>>SILE: And when we really look at, you know, a lot of times when people are saying rhythm and blues, that is country music.
>>INTERVIEWER: No doubt.
>>SILE: That is so country music. I don't know how if you listen to country, how you cannot listen to rhythm and blues, you know. Especially blues -that is like, COUNTRY!
>>INTERVIEWER: [laughter] For sure!
>>SILE: You know, that is a bucket and a string. Country. So, it's interesting, you know, how that kind of happens, and now, you know, we're seeing more. I'm very interested to read these books and find out, you know, what folks are saying because it always seemed that, um, that would be apart. That you could be over here with the black folks and be with the black literary stuff, like African American studies, but you're not going to find very much queer, GLBT stuff there. You can go to Women's Studies, you know, and maaayyybeee it'll be a little bit better than what you expect, but I think that you'd be surprised. Sorry my sisters, but it's true. [laughter] You know, what you will find there and how much of it is written by someone else's eyeballs and someone else's words - someone else's narrative and interpretation of what they're saying. Or I can go to GLBT stuff and if I get to transgender stuff, forget about it. I'm not seeing my country folk there for sure, and I'm definitely not seeing my black folk there. So, you know, I think that as far as we've come, it's really nothing more than a step. It really is, you know. It's a huge step.
>>INTERVIEWER: Right.
>>SILE: It's a huge step, but it's really... I mean, you know, I shouldn't have to try so hard.
>>INTERVIEWER: Yeah, tip of the iceberg still.
>>SILE: You know, I shouldn't have to try so hard.
>>INTERVIEWER: So, you are just so wise. [laughter]
>>SILE: I'm wise? I'm old. That's what happens when you're old.
>>INTERVIEWER: [laughter] Well, whose meditations seem to be more, uh, accurate? Linus' or Kung Fu's?
>>SILE: [laughter] I find they're both pretty useful.
>>INTERVIEWER: [laughter] Okay!
>>SILE: You know, now, I don't know. "Too Wong Foo", there's some stuff in there that was pretty good! [laughter]
>>INTERVIEWER: [laughter] "Too Wong Foo!" I loved that movie when I was little!
>>SILE: The book was better, was even better!
>>INTERVIEWER: Really? When that movie came out, I mean... sorry this is about you but I'll share my little story. [laughter] When that movie came out I was, that was like the '90s right? I was, like, I'm going to say, like just getting into middle school, maybe? I was born in '87 so whenever that... And I remember renting it from Blockbuster from London, Ohio...
>>SILE: Oh, wow.
>>INTERVIEWER: And so we got it and I'd watch it all the time. My mom watched it with me and I just thought it was so funny and until I was seventeen, I did not understand what was going on. [laughter] You know, I mean, because John Leguizamo was so good-looking!
>>SILE: [laughter] You didn't even know!
>>INTERVIEWER: No, I... I mean I kind of got it but I didn't get the whole thing behind it, you know. I just thought it was cool because I loved how they went and dressed all the women up in the city and the women started feeling good about themselves and stuff. And I just thought they were from New York and that's where I wanted to move so it's like, 'Oh, this is awesome!' [laughter] You know, I mean, I got that they were performers, mainly. I didn't... not until I was older did I get that it was a lifestyle thing. I mean, I knew that it was happening - I wasn't like oblivious to it. But I was like, 'That's cool, whatever!'
>>SILE: Yeah, right! I mean, it is... it is like that though.
>>INTERVIEWER: Yeah. I was like, 'Why is he so upset that that cop's going to find out his name is Eugene?' You know, and I was like ten. Then I was like, 'Oh, OH!' I guess me realizing...
>>SILE: It's fun - in the book, you get to hear what the cop, you get to hear more about what's going through their minds when they're like figuring it out, you know? And, I don't know.
>>INTERVIEWER: Yeah, it was amazing. I don't know, I think looking back... there are a lot of things that I look back on now that I'm like, 'Oh, I didn't get that!' Like, Ren and Stimpy! I saw that on the other day, not that that has anything to do with LGBT, but, you know what I mean, it was like, 'Man!' That's a pretty bad cartoon for kids!
>>SILE: Oh, yeah.
>>INTERVIEWER: You know, I didn't realize that when I was younger and stuff.
>>SILE: I did not like that Ren and Stimpy.
>>INTERVIEWER:[laughter] My dad always did - I thought it was weird.
>>SILE: You know, it just... I don't know. You know, I'll be... I'll think, now I'm like, okay, well in my lifetime I didn't think... You know, I guess one thing that's happened with literature - because there's been so many things that I did not think that I would live to see in my lifetime, then I think that it's opened up for me the possibilities of other things to be able to happen.
>>INTERVIEWER: Right.
>>SILE: You know, that I don't find myself as jaded as I thought maybe I was going to be.
>>INTERVIEWER: Sure.
>>SILE: You know, and that I... I don't know. You know, I just feel like now what I need to do is, you know, write some kids series of books, you know,with, like gay parents or gay something, you know in there. I... I don't know. I'm just waiting to see...
>>INTERVIEWER: How that evolves?
>>SILE: How that evolves. You know?
>>INTERVIEWER: For sure! Well thank you so much for this amazing array of stories! [laughter]